Regulation of Artificial Intelligence Bill 2026: Second Stage
Dail Éireann — 2026-06-24
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Richard O'Donoghue (II), Limerick County

AI in some instances scares me and in some instances it is good for different parts if it is used correctly. How many people go on their phone and then no longer know what is actually factual or not? My concern about AI is that we need to get on top of it fairly quickly. I was in the Central Bank on Tuesday for a visit with the budgetary oversight committee. There are concerns about AI in this country. Now we do not know if the Strait of Hormuz is open or not because we do not know what to believe on this or not. What kinds of decisions are being made when things are happening around this world and people have a knee-jerk reaction to something they think is happening but it is not? From that point of view, we need to do something with AI.
Children today actually look at their phones and everything they look at on their phone actually works on them whereby anything they click on is put in front of them every time they turn on their phone. Every time they flick up on something or look at something, regardless of what it is, it keeps a rota going on with that system because the algorithm knows this is what the child is interested in. So, what does it do? It brainwashes them. If you keep seeing the same thing over and over again, then you start following different paths.
When it comes to our children and our students, they go to school to learn but they now have systems put in place to see if they are using it for their homework. Now we have to put a system in place to see if somebody is doing their homework or not, and that is based over the four or five years that they are in school. They are actually using the system now to see if the are actually using AI as part of their homework system. Again, technology is good and it can help with research and so on, but now we have to put things in place to make sure it is actually the person who is doing the work. This does not just apply to children and students. A lot of people use it in their jobs at the moment and also the people in this House. How many of us are using AI? How many used AI to do their speeches today? I did not.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-06-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:06+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-24